A sound takes place : noise, difference and sonorous individuation after Deleuze

Abstract

This thesis traces an idea of auditory influence or sonorous individuation through three distinct areas of sound-art practice. These three areas are discussed according to a kind of spatial contraction, passing from the idea of auditory influence in acoustic ecology and field recording practices, to its expression in work happening at the intersection of soundart and architecture, and finally towards headphonic space and the interior of the body. Through these diverse fields and divergent practices a common idea pertaining to the influence of the auditory upon listening subjects is revealed, which itself brings up questions concerning the constitution of a specifically auditory subjectivity in relation to the subject ‘as a whole’. Towards the expression of a theory of sonorous individuation appropriate to practices approaching sonorous matters in the mode of a sonic materialism, the philosophical work of Gilles Deleuze is called upon as a critical framework. This philosophical framework is adopted as it clearly expresses a spatio-temporally contingent theory of individuation. This particular contingency becomes necessary in exploring works wherein the production of acoustic space is understood as being indissociable from a subjective ‘modulation’ or process of sonorous individuation, in which auditory individuals or listening subjects are bound within and influenced by acoustic spaces in which a sound takes place and a self takes shape.